Wallace & Gromit - The Curse Of The Wererabbit
It’s hard to think of anyone who doesn’t like Wallace and Gromit – or even how anyone could fail to like them. There’s something about this bumblingly eccentric inventor’s bizarrely mundane adventures with his infinitely more intelligent, exasperated yet ever loyal dog which seems especially English. The ever-creative humour and pitch-perfect timing of this animated duo’s escapades, as meticulously crafted by creator Nick Park and his team, simply brings the concept to perfection.
Although they first appeared in 1989’s BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated short A Grand Day Out, nipping off to the moon to stock up on cheese, since the wonderfully whimsical The Wrong Trousers back in 1993, with its mechanical legwear and evil penguin, they have effectively become a national institution. In the run-up to 1995’s broadcast of A Close Shave the BBC even made the pair the centrepiece of their Christmas TV schedules, the two of them popping up in between programmes to much delight, further heightening the expectation.
And so now, ten years after their last proper outing, Wallace and Gromit return in their longest adventure yet – longer, in fact, than all their previous films put together.
There’s normally some worry when an idea which started as a series of short films not topping half an hour is expanded to feature-length. Concepts which can be sustained for thirty minutes can often seem stretched when taken to ninety, especially when they are such simple ones as a crackpot inventor whose machines have a tendency to go haywire and who has a predilection for cheese unknowingly being saved from disaster by a mute mutt. Innumerable films taken from cartoons or TV series have struggled to shake off their origins in the shorter, episodic format of the small screen. Yet when it comes to Wallace and Gromit, somehow – perhaps thanks to the success of Park’s Chicken Run film from five years ago – you know that on this occasion they’re going to pull it off.
And pull it off they have. The remarkable Peter Sallis – now in his eighties and one of the few remaining stars of long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, for which he is still best known as the nervous sidekick Cleggy – returns as the beautifully distinctive, slightly whining voice of Wallace, without which it’s hard to see how the series could carry on. After being the sole voice on the duo’s first outing, this time he’s backed up by those quintessentially upper-class English stars Ralph Feinnes and Helena Bonham Carter, as well as British comedy favourites Peter Kay of Phoenix Nights, John Thompson of The Fast Show, Liz Smith of The Royle Family and Nicholas Smith of Are You Being Served? It’s a veritable wealth of distinctive voices to add extra eccentric colour to the bizarre goings on as Wallace and Gromit have to use all their nous to defeat the terrifying apparition that is the wererabbit of the title – a hulking behemoth of a bunny causing chaos in the cabbage patches.
The Legend of Zorro
It has been seven years since The Mask of Zorro catapulted its stars, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, from moderate fame to stardom. Seven years is normally a very long time to wait for a sequel – there are few exceptions to the rule that more than three years equals disappointing box office and normally equally disappointing films.
This swashbuckling Spanish-American Robin Hood, however, is one of those enduring icons of the screen. He’d survived decades without a proper film to his name until the 1998 revival yet managed to pull it off and, much as with the likes of King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes, there’s rarely any reason to believe that we’ve seen the last of him – he’s simply too good a character, too fun an idea. After all, what could be more typically classic Hollywood than a cross between a Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler and a John Wayne cowboy? And that, at its heart, is what Zorro is all about. Oh, and fighting for truth, justice and all that, obviously…
While The Mask of Zorro was by no means a classic of filmmaking genius it was, nonetheless, a great night out. After nearly a decade of “modern” and “gritty” blockbusters, it was a return to the old-school Hollywood – the glamour, the silliness, the fun. There hadn’t been a new Indiana Jones film in nine years, and the public were screaming out for a true, uncomplicated hero, preferably with a whip, to leap about the shop like a deranged baboon once again.
No one really knew it at the time, but this was the sort of thing we all secretly wanted from our movies – stereotypical heroism, a glamorous girl, horses galloping and swordfights. Zorro was the perfect combination of the two genres that made Hollywood, and here it was on our screens once more. We could forgive the fact that the film was fairly unoriginal, because the joy of sparkling sabres clinking against each other in a rapid dance was simply too fundamentally cinematic for us to care if the plot was up to much.
So now, with Zeta-Jones now Oscar-nominated and Banderas with a great line in self-parody via the Spy Kids franchise and Shrek 2, they team up once more to bring us more of the same. Is it a top-notch film? No – but neither was the original. Is it great fun? Certainly. It has all the elements anyone could want from either a Western or a swashbuckler, with chases, fights and stunts galore plus, in a fine tradition of sequels trying to bring in the kiddie market, an adorable child sidekick – this time the son of Zorro and his dear wife, caught up in intrigue seemingly designed solely to provide excuses for old-fashioned excitement.
In short, it’s pure Hollywood: glitz galore, utterly shallow, nearly completely mindless, and hugely enjoyable – as long as you don’t go in expecting a masterpiece, you’ll have a whale of a time. Just don’t analyse it too much, or you’ll realise that when they used to refer to the movies as shadows on the wall it was largely because they were all just as insubstantial.
Sky High
Hey – superhero flicks have been popular the last few years, right? And kids love superheroes, right? And kids’ films can make bucketloads of money, can’t they? Hey – why don’t we do a superhero flick about kids with superpowers? At a school for superheroes and stuff! It’d be great!
What? What do you mean X-Men revolves around a school for superheroes? What do you mean the Harry Potter films are basically about a school for kids with incredible powers? What do you mean there was a film released only a couple of months ago, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, which was all about superhero kids? What do you mean The Incredibles had superhero kids? Are you saying this idea’s not original enough?
But who cares? If we do it well enough, the idea’s obviously got legs, hasn’t it? It must be a good one if there have been a load of films based around it already, and if they’ve all done relatively well, right? Well, except for that Shark Boy one, but that was just because it was a badly thought-out rehash of Spy Kids by the guy who came up with that franchise and had run out of ideas.
What? No, of course this hasn’t got any similarity to Spy Kids! Just because it’s about a boy whose parents are the best at their crime-fighting game and has to end up rescuing them from one of their enemies, like Spy Kids. And The Invisibles, for that matter… But shhh! You’re such a downer, man…
And anyway, a large chunk of this film is about this kid who’s just normal and stuff, right, but then he finds out he’s got these special abilities and has to come to terms with them, right? What? No, of course it’s not just like the first Spider-man film. Or just like that Smallville TV series about the young Superman. Or just like Batman Begins. It’s totally different! Sort of…
Anyway, we can get in some actors to appeal to kids’ parents – some hero figures from cult movies, like Bruce Campbell from the Evil Dead series! What? He’s already had cameos in both Spider-man films? So what? We’ll make him a teacher at this school for superheroes and he can use his trademark charm and comic timing to full effect. And we can get in Kurt Russell from The Thing, Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China! Those are all-time eighties classics, and it’s people who were growing up in the eighties who have got kids now – they’ll love it!
In other words, as if you hadn’t realised by now, this is hardly the most original idea to have come out of Hollywood in the last few years, and seems based largely on a careful analysis of market trends and previous successes. That doesn’t, however, make this a bad film. It doesn’t make it a great film either, but then it is largely designed for the kids, and as such it’s actually really rather fun. It’s got all the ingredients you’d expect from something that’s been scrupulously market researched – and so is good for a very entertaining night out, kids or no kids. Well worth a look.
Serenity
Having turned a failed movie into a hit TV series, can Joss Whedon now turn a failed TV series into a hit movie? After the relative failure of his 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Whedon five years later somehow managed to gain funding for a TV series based on the same concept, and turned it first into a cult hit and then a multi-million dollar smash.
This time he’s hoping that his Buffy follow-up, the sci-fi Western series Firefly that was cancelled after less than one series in 2002 despite having gained a respectable cult following, can provide him with a much-needed career boost after three years of doing very little. Even before its release Serenity, a feature-length version of Firefly with much the same cast as the TV series, seems to have – for Whedon at least – done the trick: he’s already landed the job of directing the big budget film version of hot comic book property Wonder Woman, largely on the pre-release buzz for this sci-fi actioner.
The obvious question that follows is whether or not Whedon’s apparent return to Hollywood’s favour is down to the quality of his new product or merely the fanaticism of his fans.
Well, all the usual Whedon ingredients are here – humour, stylish action and fairly decent plotting. But as he’s more used to working within the less restrictive confines of television, where he’d normally have twenty hours rather than two to play out his story, the subtleties and character development are naturally not quite as satisfyingly complex as his fans may be used to. For those who have seen the TV series from which this film has arisen this won’t be a problem, hence the good buzz from the fans – but what of everyone else?
Well, it’s sci-fi for starters, which may put some off straight away - and in any case we’ve been inundated with such movies over the last few years. Especially after the last Star Wars prequel, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could top George Lucas in terms of massive space battles and incomprehensible action. It’s also sci-fi based around a small group of comrades in arms, stuck in a tiny vessel in the far reaches of space, battling – as the rules of the genre dictate – against a far superior, malevolent force, epitomised by a sole baddie. On the surface it could seem like a typically derivative rip-off of everything that’s gone before, and to an extent it is.
What lifts this at least some way above the usual paint-by-numbers fantasy flick is Whedon’s knack for amusing, snappy dialogue and character interaction. The cast, honed as they have been by months spent filming the failed TV series stuck in each others’ company day in day out, work superbly together, even if they may not exactly be of Academy Award standard. There’s something about it which seems almost home-made in its easy charm, despite the fancy special effects. While certainly not worthy of any major accolades, if you like the genre or have enjoyed Whedon’s work in the past, you could do far, far worse than this.
Oliver Twist
There have been well over twenty different film versions of this, one of Charles Dickens’ most famous tales. Even in the last few years there have been high-profile television versions produced on both sides of the Atlantic, the British with Robert Lindsay as the perennial favourite Fagin, the American with Richard Dreyfuss – and a then unknown Elijah (Frodo) Wood as the youthful master thief the Artful Dodger.
Yet despite all these many different takes on what is, at its heart, a fairly simple story of the desire to be loved and human nature, the best remain David Lean’s 1948 take, with Alec Guinness as a deliciously over the top Fagin, and Carol Reed’s much-loved 1968 musical version.
But the very simplicity of the tale of the little orphan boy’s attempts to make it in the world has been hugely overplayed in the innumerable adaptations of the last few decades. Dickens may have dreamed up larger than life, almost stereotypical characters on occasion, but he remains one of the masters of the storytelling craft, and his true genius lies as much in his beneath-the-surface complexity and, in particular, his social awareness as his ability to spin a yarn.
Much the same could be said of director Roman Polanski – it’s often easy to forget that this is the man responsible for the groundbreakingly complex and in many ways Dickensian Chinatown, so often is he remembered for the much-parodied horror classic Rosemary’s Baby, the equally gruesome murder of his wife by the Manson Family and the conviction for statutory rape that has forced him to flee America for the rest of his life.
In 2002, after two decades of comparative filmmaking mediocrity, Polanski proved he still had it in him with the multiple Oscar-winning The Pianist. While his take on Oliver Twist may be neither as deep nor as original as that intimate portrayal of the Holocaust, nor as likely to win awards, it nonetheless shows that Polanski’s long-overdue return to form was not a mere one-off.
There still remains the question of precisely what the point is of doing a more serious version of this incredibly well-known classic when David Lean’s 1948 film is so perfectly realised. Is Sir Ben Kingsley up to bettering Sir Alec Guinness as Fagin? Well, he’s certainly up to equalling him. Are child actors Barney Clark (as Oliver) and Harry Eden (The Artful Dodger) able to avoid the usual cringe-making awfulness of kiddies on screen? Pretty much.
There of course is no point in yet another remake of such a famous and loved story other than that it is famous and well-loved. And this is a wonderfully skilled new version of it to appeal to a whole new generation – after all, musicals aren’t for everyone, and Lean’s version is in black and white, which many still seem to find off-putting. Polanski has provided over a new, charming, faithful and beautifully-shot Oliver Twist which should keep us all entertained for years to come.
Doom
Films based on computer games really haven’t got a very good pedigree. After the first attempt, the truly abysmal Super Mario Brothers back in 1993 – where both Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper put in turn which are well up there among their worst – many thought that they may have learned their lessons. After all, most games, at least back in the early 1990s, had little in the way of plot or characterisation, and how could you possibly make a film without those?
But as computer game technology advanced and games became more involved and complex, Hollywood kept track of the success of this new rival to its crown as head of all entertainment. By the late 1990s, top computer games began to make nearly as much money as many movies (and now they often surpass them), and so the studio executives began to hunt around. Tomb Raider seemed a perfect choice – a sexy, posh Englishwoman with guns battling against strange beasts in a modern Indiana Jones style. But it was awful. Resident Evil seemed another sure-fire hit – another sexy female lead, but this time with all the benefit of decades-worth of zombie film lore to fall back on. Again, failure. Let’s not even go down the path of the shockingly awful Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter: The Movie, both of which were based on games with precisely no plot whatsoever – all they involved was beating people up.
Yet despite the failure of just about every film based on a computer game so far, they’re still determined to push ahead with the idea. On the basis of games from recent years, you could see how they could think it might work – as technology has improved the likes of the Grand Theft Auto series and others do have definite plots, and borrow liberally from Hollywood, so why shouldn’t Hollywood do the same? There have even recently been computer game versions of some Hollywood classics, notably Star Wars and even The Godfather and Scarface, and almost every blockbuster is now transferred to consoles, sometimes even before it has hit the cinemas.
Yet still they don’t appear to have learned their lesson in Hollywood. Rather than take a complex, narrative and character-driven game like the ongoing favourite The Legend of Zelda and turn that into a movie, they’ve once again decided to pick one of the least cinematic titles possible – the once groundbreaking Doom. This was a game with no plot, no real characters, just first-person blowing the living hell out of everything that moves with a variety of increasingly ridiculous weapons.
The trouble is, Doom itself was largely based on a film – the 1986 action-fest Aliens. The basic idea was exactly the same – kill as many nasty beasties as you can and get out alive. Aliens, of course, had rather more to it than that, and was a moderately successful satire on not only Vietnam war films, but also 1980s capitalism – even if many of its fans couldn’t have cared less about the political commentary. The Aliens formula was taken even further in 1997’s Starship Troopers – a satire so perfect that the majority of people who saw it didn’t even realise that it was satirical. So, once you’ve had films that good revolving around mindless killing of as many nasty beasties as possible, why bother with another?
Well, in short, because it’s fun. No one expected anything brilliant from this film – not least because it stars ex-wrestler The Rock – and if anyone did then they’re a fool. It was always going to be mindless nonsense. But mindless nonsense can be great fun. Is this? Well, to be honest it depends how drunk you are. A Saturday nighter, most likely.
Domino
If you had your pick of people to play a ruthless, heroin-addicted bounty hunter, it’d normally be a fairly safe bet that Keira Knightley would come somewhere near the very bottom of your list. All she ever seems to do in all the various films in which she’s appeared since shooting to fame in Bend it Like Beckham is play exactly the kind of posh-sounding public schoolgirl that she appears to be in real life.
In this particular glossy bounty hunter action flick, however, she is perfectly cast, as the real story on which it is based is just as unbelievable as the idea that Knightley could convincingly wield heavy machine guns and take on America’s most wanted.
Domino Harvey was the illegitimate professional model daughter of Oscar-nominated actor Laurence Harvey – famed for his turns in the likes of Room at the Top and the original version of The Manchurian Candidate – and step-daughter of the owner of the Hard Rock Café chain. She was a typically plumy, good-looking middle class girl to boot, exactly the type of girl you can find strutting around Chelsea any day of the week blathering about the latest fashions and saying “yah, daaarling” a lot. Yet she ended up in some of the most grimy and horrible places in the US, mixing with – and fighting with – the kind of people you’d normally not only cross the street to avoid, but probably hail a taxi to speed away from as fast as humanly possible. She died earlier this year, aged thirty-five, apparently unimpressed with what she had seen of this Hollywoodisation of her life.
From that little overview, it should be fairly obvious that this is perfect, near ideal Hollywood material from the get-go. Domino Harvey was the sort of person who, if she didn’t exist some movie executive would have had to have invented her. In fact, arguably they already did – although it was a computer games geek rather than a film man – with Lara Croft and Tomb Raider.
Nonetheless, even though this is the real thing, the real-life Harvey’s slow descent into drug-based self-destruction is hardly as much fun as the idea of a glamorous, gorgeous, incredibly posh English model charging around with big guns shooting people. So they’ve got in the man behind possibly the cheesiest Hollywood action film of all time, Tony “Top Gun” Scott (also known to pretty much everyone as “not as good as his big brother Ridley”), and he’s applied his trademark over-the-top glossy romanticism in thick, gloopy coatings.
As such, the big budget and big-name cast (running from Christopher Walken and Lucy Liu to Mickey Rourke and Mena Suvari, not to mention the incredibly well-preserved Jaqueline Bisset) couple with Scott Jr’s rather crude taste for flashy camera effects and try-hard editing to make this, really, little more than the kind of film you’d expect had Hollywood actually invented Harvey. Little here rings of truth, and her story has been tarted up for mass appeal. But it is, nonetheless, rather fun, and probably Knightley’s best role to date – after all, at least in this outing she does something other than simply sound posh and look concerned all the time.
Broken Flowers
Of late Bill Murray seems to be making a bit of a thing out of playing middle-aged men desperately searching for some kind of meaning in their lives. There was, of course, the almost depressingly bleak and lonely Lost in Translation, then the quirky The Life Aquatic and now this which, as in that last film, revolves around the discovery of a son he never knew existed and the resultant confusion about the state of his life.
If it weren’t for the fact that Murray is one of the most instantly lovable of all Hollywood stars – from his outings among the original line-up of Saturday Night Live and stoner turn in the classic Caddyshack through Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day right up to his resurgence of the last couple of years – it would be tempting to suggest he’s getting typecast. Yet, with the sole exception of last year’s disappointing Garfield movie (for which he was, in any case, perfectly cast), his choice of roles in at least his last ten movies have been impeccable – interesting, deep beneath a placid surface and wonderfully quirky to the last. When you’re doing something so well, why stop?
So here, after receiving an anonymous letter telling him an ex-girlfriend (of which there are many) had a son by him years ago, Murray sets out to track down his old flames and discover which of them is the mother of the child he never knew existed. His by now familiar hang-dog expression, the world-weary gaze and easy, droll humour are given at least as full a work-out as they were in Lost in Translation, yet despite being in places equally philosophical, this comes closer to the comedy for which Murray became famous than Sofia Coppola’s understated take on middle age. Which considering the director is odd indy hero Jim Jarmusch is rather weird, as he’s not a man generally known for too much humour.
Jarmusch is often at his best when dealing with lone men trying to work out a problem, such as with the superb Ghost Dog and Dead Man, and here the existential ponderings of his often emotionless lead again prove a fruitful cinematic vein for him to mine. In Ghost Dog it was Forest Whittaker, in Dead Man Johnny Depp – and now, having cropped up in Jarmusch’s last film Coffee and Cigarettes, Murray gets to try and act without really doing much as well. That American critics have already been suggesting Oscar nods should tell you all you need to know.
Jarmusch is usually not for everyone – even when making a film about a hit man his pacing was relatively slow and the action intermittent at best – and is often considered pretentiously arty by his critics, yet here he has finally managed, thanks to Murray’s superb central performance and his top-notch supporting cast, to create something almost mainstream. Yet mainstream with an edge unlike that which you’ll find in your standard Hollywood fare – a different, more wistful approach to filmmaking which could well prove to be a welcome break from the usual explosions, guns and action. Certainly well worth checking out.
